By the time Matt Hendrix reached high school, he thought he was done with playing the flute. "I hated it!" he says with a laugh. His parents, however, had other ideas. "They said I had to try it for at least a year, and then if I still didn't like it, I could quit." The gamble paid off. Hendrix did end up liking it again. In fact, he spent the next four years playing with the Grissom High School band before going on to earn a degree in music education at UAH. Now he works full time as the band director of Whitesburg P-8 (formerly Whitesburg Middle School) and part time as the director of the UAH Pep Band. "I'm happy because I get to do what I love," he says.